


not your friend (but not your enemy)

by scorpionGrass



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Castle Oblivion (Kingdom Hearts), Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25539589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpionGrass/pseuds/scorpionGrass
Summary: “Are you,” she starts quietly, “supposed to be my bodyguard?”Axel smirks. “Is that what they told you?”
Kudos: 17





	not your friend (but not your enemy)

Castle Oblivion is a maze of white halls and white rooms and white doors leading to more white halls and white rooms and white doors. Namine sits at the top and imagines she’s a queen residing in her own castle, trying to forget that she’s really just a prisoner in another white room for a cell, with a white door leading only to her captors.

Marluxia, the one with long pink hair, provides her with sketchbooks and all the art supplies she could ever ask for, but Namine carefully selects the crayons and uses only those.

(Maybe if her sketches aren’t very good, their plans won’t work.)

~

The witch. The girl. _It._ They never call her by name, but there’s a new member, with spiky red hair and face tattoos, who doesn’t feel the same. He lounges around the Castle, not really caring one way or another about the others or their plans, and spends most of his time with her, borrowing paper and crayons to doodle.

“Namine, right?” he had asked her when they’d first met, as if he would actually memorize or use it.

Now, he slouches in the chair next to her and watches her work, colouring in a scene of a meteor shower with blunted crayons. She hopes it doesn’t work, but so far everything has. Sora’s memories are fading and being replaced, and it’s all her fault.

“Are you,” she starts quietly, “supposed to be my bodyguard?”

Axel smirks. “Is that what they told you?”

Marluxia hadn’t told her anything, but the way Axel is always around her makes her think… “No,” she says, even quieter.

He shrugs. “I’m not here for you, actually, but in the end, that just might be a by-product of my work.”

Namine looks up at him with wide eyes, clutching her crayon a bit tighter.

He chuckles. “Don’t let that give you any false hope, Namine. I’m not your hero, after all.”

~

Sora moves quickly through the castle, each floor created from his memories to replicate the worlds he’s visited, whether he remembers them or not. Namine watches as he walks through a town that the others say is “from the other side of his heart.” It’s beautiful, with a perpetual sunset. Beautiful and serene, and she wonders what it would be like to live there. To be surrounded by warmth instead of the cold stark white of Castle Oblivion.

“Jealous?” Axel asks, though he sounds almost wistful as he watches through the same screens she does.

She sits back in her chair, putting her crayons down, and sighs. “Does it matter?”

“It’s called Twilight Town,” he says after a moment. “I’ve been there.”

Namine watches him curiously. “What’s it like?”

“Warm. Always feels like the start of summer,” Axel describes for her. “There’s a vendor who sells sea-salt ice cream that all the kids spend their allowances on. And there’s a Struggle tournament for kids where they fight with plastic bats. There’s a tram so you can get from one end of the town to another, and a train so you can travel across the river, to the beach. And a mansion outside town that the kids say is haunted.”

“Is it?”

Axel smirks. “Nah, just a local legend.”

“You know a lot about this place,” Namine says.

“I know a lot about a lot of places. The Organization has me travel a lot,” Axel reveals. “Used to be there, now I’m here with you.”

Namine wonders what that would be like, travelling instead of cooped up here. “That sounds amazing.”

“Maybe from the outside.” He yawns and stretches and stands up from the table. “You know, everything always looks better from the outside. Grass is greener, all that.”

Somehow, Namine believes anything would be greener than being here.

~

Sora is close, so close, and she can’t do anything but watch as her work, her falsified memories, takes over his priorities and breaks apart his friendships. It’s too late to do anything now.

“You’re all he can think about.”

Namine doesn’t need to look up to know it’s Axel. She clenches her hands into fists in her lap, staring at her sketchbook but not quite seeing it.

“You’re the only one who can save him now,” he says, the lilt of a smirk in his voice. “So, what’s it gonna be?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says softly, bitterly. “It’s too late.”

She can see Axel turn away and shrug. “I don’t see Marluxia here, do you? There’s no one here who wants to stop you.”

_Wants to stop me?_

Namine glances up at Axel, realization at his words dawning on her. Her captors are busy, Axel doesn’t care, and maybe… she can fix what she broke with her own hands. She’s on her feet before she can make the decision, rushing past him and through the white door that only ever led to Marluxia.

But now it leads to a chance.

**Author's Note:**

> This was fun to write. Was rereading the CoM manga and some cutscenes because I've been hyperfixated on KH theories, and this happened.
> 
> You should follow me on Twitter :3 I'm [@piperEXE](https://twitter.com/piperEXE) and I literally have no one to talk to about fic <3


End file.
